Samsung YP-R1 8GB video review

Put simply, the YP-R1 is a delight to use. Its touchscreen interface is the best you'll find on a device without an Apple logo, it's attractively and well designed and, importantly, it sounds excellent. Plus, it's almost ridiculously cheap compared to its rivals, especially when you consider how much functionality Samsung has crammed in.

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Mik

October 15, 2009, 10:56 am

All very nice, but will I be able to buy one this time, Samsung?? I'm thinking of the situation with the P3 - fantastic machine, impossible to get hold of - does the term vapourware apply to hardware?

comedian

October 15, 2009, 12:29 pm

Colour me interested, especially the 16gb version.

Now if only they had included a micro SD slot.

Gordon 1

October 19, 2009, 7:57 pm

I'm a very happy user of a P2 4gb (bought when it first came out), thinking of upgrading to the P3 or the R1 in 16gb guise (both about that same price as the P2, w 4x the memory!)- Anybody have input as to which one is better? Sound quality is most important, but am partial to the occasional i-player download too.

skybluedream

October 27, 2009, 10:12 am

Nice review!

I would like to know 2 things though...

Is there a separate charger port on the player? i.e. can you charge it with an adapter? Or it can be charged only via the USB cable?

2. The TV-Out cable which it uses, are they the normal ones like the Creative Zen Vision W? or special one's like the iPod with a proprietary connector?

Thanks.

jsg 1

October 30, 2009, 8:03 pm

I bought this player instead of Sony S-series because you wrote about the great format support including AAC, however it won´t play AAC from Itunes plus. Thats disappointing.

Zero

October 31, 2009, 2:27 am

I saw this today in Comet! Boy oh boy is it small seriously! and it packs all that

Paul H

November 4, 2009, 8:21 pm

But there's no music shuffle, I don't want to choose tracks or albums, I want the surprise of hearing tracks I'd forgotten. Or is it there and I'm missing it?

David

November 24, 2009, 10:56 pm

WMA support, does that include WMA lossless and DRM'd WMAs? And most importantly, given CDs widely ranging levels, does it support replay gain?

As for whether a device this small needs FLAC support, well if you have your CDs ripped in FLAC then the shear laziness of not having to transcode them is a plus! (and of course most audiophiles would happily sacrifice space for additional quality).

Mottlefeeder

January 3, 2010, 12:15 am

To reply to Paul H - it does have music shuffle. You have to drill down to a particular track, and then you will get repeat and shuffle in the play options (three horizontal bars, looking like a stack). If you drill down by genre (e.g. Jazz), it will shuffle within that genre, if you drill down by artist, it will shuffle all that artist's tracks, and if you drill down by album, it will shuffle only the tracks of that album. - That's better than I expected.

Gordon 1

January 9, 2010, 5:24 am

Just ordered the 16gb version on Amazon marketplace (seller Hughes Direct which looks to have a reasonably high satisfaction score, and enough buyer numbers to make that score count...hopefully...) for £80 delivered. Peeked at the HD site, and they had the 8gb version for £50 (but out of stock).

Brendan6e4

January 25, 2010, 6:22 am

I bought this player at before Christmas after reading the glowing review on this site. Overall I'm sort of happy with it, great file support, excellent sound output and amazing screen but there are huge problems with it.

Battery life is the first issue. Samsung site claims 25 hours audio playback and 5 hours video playback. I know stats are usually slightly exaggerated but I found audio playback to be around 6 hours and video playback about 3 hours this is with bluetooth off. This is a huge kick in the teeth.

Next problem was interface stability. This machine crashes a lot. Often just when pressing the hold button or changing tracks. This problem occurs at least once a day. I've started to wince every time I do something with the fear of it crashing or just freezing up. Sometimes you can't restart it until you connect it to your pc. But usually it restarts with a recovering firmware message which usually takes about 1 or 2 minutes. I've updated the firmware to 3.0 but this hasn't fixed the problems.

When I was deciding to buy this I was really interested in the TV out feature. But upon arrival No cable was supplied or even mentioned, no guide either. I went to currys and picked up a 3.5mm jack and the other side with a composite connexion but I haven't got it to work yet....

All in all it is a great player let down by what I feel is a slapdash approach by Samsung. There is practically ZERO support for this player in box or online and this clearly demonstrates their attitude to their customers. "Pump the products out and worry about testing later" was clearly their approach. Perhaps they put a sticker saying "beta version" on this product because it's obviously a work in progress.

Bit of a shame really.

Gordon 1

January 31, 2010, 2:16 am

Back up what Brendan says - battery life is short (they do say quoted times are with everything switched off, including DNSe sound processing), I've turned down the brightness to minimum for the screen, and trained myself to be less trigger happy with searching, fast-forwarding etc.

Mine originally crashed a bit too, doesn't seem to happen so often now - It used to happen when I was speeding through stuff, now do everything w a pause between each action...Also bluetooth connection is a bit haphazard, refusing to connect with things you've previously paired with, so you have to 'dump' the headphones/speakers/whatever and pair with it again.

HOWEVER, I remember going through a baptism of fire w the YP-P2 originally too, and firmware upgrades gradually ironed out the kinks, and in the meantime you've still got a great player to play with and listen to, so am pretty confident that subsequent firmware upgrades will sort out the major issues (I understand the latest update they've currently got in Korea extends battery life, for example).

yukmun

March 17, 2010, 3:06 pm

Does R1 has a speaker?

Thank You.

Gordon 1

March 26, 2010, 3:12 am

@yukmun - No it doesn't have a speaker - the YP-P3 has a speaker, as does the Sony S545. Unless using it as an alarm, if you want portability and speaker-sound, you're better off getting a dedicated separate set of portable speakers - I carry a Nokia unit (about size of mars bar) for portable listening.

Biggles

May 6, 2010, 3:09 pm

This is one fantastic little player, packed with features, excellent resolution on the screen for photos and for movie/TV downloads.

BUT like others on here it does fallover on a regular basis. Fireware Recovery is a screen that you will get used to. As above skimming very quickly through the screens seems to bring this on. The only good thing is that it doesn't seem to affect your default settings. My advice put it on shuffle put it in your pocket and listen to it - don't do too much messing about and it will be fine.

I have the 8Mb version from Hughes Direct @ £49.99 its a little gem!

Nahum

May 21, 2010, 11:08 pm

Bought this a while back, and it is a fantastic player :D However, the reason why I do not have it now is because it failed on me. Mode of failure is that one day when it updated its database, it froze and I had to reboot it. When I rebooted it it wouldnt go past the Samsung R1 screen, and that was the end of that.

That is the only reason why I did not buy it again, because I was afraid of it happening and the site which I bought it from (Hughes Direct) did not have it back on offer. I have bought the P3 instead, one question: are the Sennheiser CX400 ii headphones better than the Samsung R1 headphones? I really liked the headphones that the Samsung came with you see and the P3 headphones are really aweful.

Johnny The Fox

April 28, 2011, 3:09 am

I have just bought the 16Gb version of the Samsung YP-R1 player, and I am interested to know, if there is a Speaker Docking system to suit it.I gather that most of the Speaker systems are based around the Apple Ipod systems.I want one that will house my MP3 player, and have a good remote control, that will navigate my music, without having to remove it from the Dock Station.Can any body help please.Thanks.

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